Mariah Carey recalls heartbreaking racial abuse throughout her childhood

Mariah Carey suffered from horrific racial abuse growing up.

The 50-year-old singer, who's mixed race, recalled a particular incident as a teenager in which she'd been targeted by her own friends in a "violent, premeditated assault."

But the bigotry she faced began well before, Mariah explains in new memoir The Meaning Of Mariah Carey.

While she avoided the level of abuse directed at her older siblings, Mariah's earliest recollection of racism was at just four years old.

She'd used a brown crayon to colour in a picture of her father, with teachers "cackling hysterically" and telling her she'd used the wrong shade.

The teachers, she writes, had only met her white mother, and not her black father.

And when she was 13 or 14, Mariah was locked in a room at her friend's house and repeatedly called the N-word after her pals discovered her father was black.

Mariah writes that "this was not your garden-variety schoolyard meangirl scuffle".

"It was a devious and violent premeditated assault by girls I called my friends," she added.

She was also spat on on the school bus and was provoked into fights.

After she'd made it as a pop star, Mariah took her mum back to the home in the Hamptons where she'd been tormented.

The chief abuser, she tells, was still living there with their family.

The tell-all new book spills on everything from Mariah's celeb feuds to her marriages.

A recent interview with Oprah Winfrey saw her take a swipe at "greedy" family members, who treated her like an "ATM machine in a wig."

"When there are people connected to you as a person that achieves a certain level of ­success, you are a target — you're vulnerable," she explained.

"But I wouldn't have gone [to a treatment centre] if things hadn't been done to me, if I hadn't been dragged by certain people and treated as an ATM machine with a wig on.

"It’s like, 'Let me get some money, and let me get some money no ­matter what.'"

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